Eberstadt contends that the defects of the current poverty rate are not only severe but irremediable.

Since its inception in 1965, America's federally established official poverty rate (OPR) has been the single most important statistic used by policymakers and concerned citizens to evaluate success or failure in the nation's efforts to alleviate poverty. In his newly released examination of this widely quoted measure, The Poverty of...

The Justice Department's internal ethics watchdog, known as the Office of Professional Responsibility, waged a witch-hunt against Bush administration lawyers who developed policies to protect the nation after 9/11 that has finally come to a close.

Though the White House will not want to admit it, Bush lawyers were protecting the executive's power to fight a vigorous war on terror.

The Poverty of "The Poverty Rate": Measure and Mismeasure of Want in Modern AmericaBy Nicholas EberstadtAEI Press, October 2008

Little has changed in the way the federal government measures poverty since 1965.

America"s most relied-upon metric for charting a course in our national effort to reduce and eliminate poverty appears to offer unreliable, and indeed increasingly misleading, soundings on where we are today, where we have come, and where we seem to be headed.

The public and press image of the Appropriations Committee is sharply at odds with the committee's history and its reality.